I was talked into playing in the Midnight Madness at the last second tonight, and with 2 minutes remaining, logged in and registered for the $10+$1 tourney. I'd never played in an online tourney with that high of a buy in before, and was quite nervous about risking about 1/5 of my bankroll on it. But I gave it a whirl, and am happy that I did. In the end, 2,313 people saw action in the tourney.
I started out quickly with Ad-Jd from the small blind, and called a 3 bet. The flop came out As-Qd-10d. I checked, my opponent bet, and I smooth called. The river was a "Yahtzee" King of Diamonds. I checked my Royal Flush, and the guy bet, and I called. The turn was a disappointment of a Js, and I led out for half the pot. With a straight on the board, my opponent let it go, and I had a good sized stack.
From there, I think that I played brilliant poker. Maybe the best that I've played in sometime. I really didn't make any mistakes, and was able to work my way into the money. Slowly, I began to navigate my way through the field, remaining at around the chip average in the later stages after being in the top 10 for much of the early stages.
Finally, with 77 players left, and me holding onto roughly 41k, I woke up in the SB with K's. An early position player went to 6k on the 1k/2k blinds, and then the player next to him shoved his whole stack (71k). Action folded to me in the SB, and I called All in. The first raiser folded, and we turned up our hands, my opponent being dominated having only pocket 10's. Now, the poker calculator says that I'm a 4 to 1 favorite to win this hand (slightly better than 80% of the time). Unfortunately, it wasn't an 80% kind of flop as it produced a 10, and I was eliminated in 77th place.
The cash of $37 was nice, but the prospect of having a significant chip stack late in a tournament is still burning in me. I guess, that stuff happens sometimes. Anyhow, I've got my account balance back into the $80 range and holding nicely with $83.15. I'm still looking at making my goal of a $100 balance, and hopeful that I can do that this week with one more decent cash.
Cheers, P
2 comments:
I realize that was not the finish you wanted but considering the size of the field that was a decent finish. Your concern about the size of the buy-in vs your bankroll is probably something you will have to work on. Winning always helps. Lol. Best wishes.
Thanks for the comment Steve. I'm still burning on that beat considering how heavy the payouts were at the final table. I really felt like I was outplaying everyone there, and I finally got the set up that I needed to get to where I was comfortable. I mean, there was just under $4 million in play, and that double would've given me only 2% of the chips in play, but a really healthy stack. And I absoultely feel that if not for the beat, I would've parlayed that hand into an amazing finish.
I hate to discredit the finsh. I mean, I did beat out more than 2000 other really good players, but I really came out of it yearning for another hand. I don't usually do that. Usually, I say GG, and move onto the next tourney, happy with my play. But given the $4k first place prize, I was really bent out of shape.
Great comment on the bankroll though. I thik that this tourney (despite the good finish) was definately out of my price range, and it probably wasn't the greatest of ideas. I should probably build my bankroll up to $200 before I think of playing this tourney consistently.
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